


A Walk in the Woods

by HTFNoelle



Series: Galin's Final Scion [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: First Meeting, Gen, One Shot, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 16:12:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8216330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HTFNoelle/pseuds/HTFNoelle
Summary: Shariel meets Malcolm Foundling, paladin of Bahamut, as he tries to find his fiancee Lorelai.





	

She found him lost, wandering a forest he had no business having been in, yet unafraid of what that meant. He was odd, whistling a carefree tune as he rounded yet another circle of his own creation. She followed him for hours, he was armed, but did not seem dangerous.

She never knew what gave her away, and he never told. But he looked, through the trees and bushes. Not at her, but close enough.

"Hello? Mind showing yourself?" His voice was almost warm, even as he laid his hand on his blade.

She stepped forward, hood up and keeping to the shadows. She tried to sound threatening, "You seem to be lost."

She failed, if his smile was any guess.

"Actually I'm not. Are you from the Galin clan?"

"Yes."

"Then would you mind if I asked a favor?"

She didn't.

* * *

 

He was odd. That was all she had decided on as they spoke. He asked too many questions that she would not, could not answer. Questions that should have made her suspicious, or worried, but instead?

Instead she pitied him.

"The one you're looking for is not among the clan."

"You're sure?"

"We have no half-bloods. We stay amongst ourselves."

She saw the gears turning in his mind, the half smile forming on his lips. She was not good at reading people, but it seemed she could read him. "And if you think us inbred because of it, all the better she isn't among our number, yes?" She couldn't hide the acid, or the hint amusement.

He smiled truly then, a chuckle rumbling in his chest. "I'm sorry, I wasn't--"

She silenced him with an arch look. He chuckled more.

"Do you know where she might be?"

More pity, then. For the wistfulness that passed over his features. There was no more acid left in her voice.  "No. As I said, Galin stay amongst our own. That might be why she told you she was descended. We are hard to find, so it is harder to find her lie."

He had seemed kind, until then. Kind in the soft, gullible way of a child or a loyal hound. But she got his hackles up with that, his eyes glittering with a hint of anger. "I don't think she lied. Maybe her father just had her before your time." 

She could not muster any anger in return, "Before my time was two hundred years ago."

His only answer for several moments was a blank look, mouth open like a hooked fish. "W-well you've certainly aged well then. Don't look a day over a... tenth of that?"

She just furrowed her brows, but that seemed to spur him on.

"I know elves age slowly but, I mean, /damn/. You could be my great grandmother five times over. That's just--"

"Normal. For elves, compared to humans." She said, in an attempt to save him from several minutes more floundering.

"Oh I'm not human. Not fully anyway. I'm a half-elf, like Lorelai."

Her eyes widened slightly, her gaze flicking to the helm that hid his ears. Her voice sounded almost dry, "And yet you've never met an elf?"

The question hung heavily for a moment before he brushed it away with his words.  "I was abandoned. Left in a shrine of Bahamut. The church raised me."

The way he said it gave no room for condolences. Just a fact easily stated, just as her childhood would have been.

"And Lorelai?"

"She wasn't an acolyte, she was-- well..." He trailed off, eyes dropping to the ground.

"Yes?"

He mumbled something unintelligible. She hid a smile. "I'm sorry?"

"A, ahhh, performer. For-- a troupe of entertainers. That came through the town."

She did not bother to hide her smile, he was far too enraptured at staring at the ground to notice.

"I see."

He glared at her then, as he had before. Going from awkward to angry in a moment.

"No you don't! I--I can tell that much! She didn't just leave, or well, she _did_. But what she left was the troupe!"

His words came faster and faster, shoving past one another to leave his lips, tumbling out so quickly she had no was to interject.

"And she stayed! At the temple! We were promised, you see? After my oaths were complete, we were going to-- but after she had Adelenna, she left. Or was kidnapped, or /something/, and I need to find her! I don't want Addie to grow up without her mother!" He stopped, red faced and gasping, trying to catch his breath. She could see the fury leeching away as she watched him. He did not hold her gaze for long, eyes dropping to the ground again in short order, but he kept his shoulders squared.

When she spoke, it was slow and disjointed, each word weighed and measured before being spoken. "I am sorry, then, that I cannot help you."

He opened his mouth, but she talked first.

"Nor would any of the clan be able to. As I said, we keep among our own."

His gaze drifted up again, bark brown eyes locking with hers. She expected anger, insistence, maybe even a tantrum. Instead: "I understand. If... if you're sure."

She nodded. He sighed, then straightened. "I suppose I will just have to keep looking then, in new places. People don't just disappear into thin air." He took a few steps in a direction that would only take him deeper into the forest with a confidence that could not have been feigned.

She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "I can at least lead you safely out of here, if nothing else." A push, to turn him in the right direction, and they set off.

It was two days to the edge of the wood from where they were. It was five before the woods were out of sight, and it was a week before he thought to ask her the obvious question.

"Why are you still here?"

An earnest question from an honest man that she answered with a lie.

"I wish to know why your Lorelai said she was from my clan."

He nodded, satisfied.

"Don't worry, when we find her, I'm sure she'll explain."

She was not sure, but it did not matter. They never found her.


End file.
